ARCHITECTURE. 9 
of the king and the royal family, is completely destroyed. A door in the south 
side of the gallery most likely led to a second building. The columns (pi. 5, 
Jig. 8), the walls, and the ceiling are covered with hieroglyphics and sculp- 
tures, representing the famous expeditions by land and sea of Sesostris, the 
Egyptian hero, and introducing very often the statue of himself, sometimes 
riding in his triumphal car, at others slaying his enemies with arrows; but 
the most remarkable are the representations of a sea-fight, in which the foe are 
represented as Indians, whilst in the battle scenes on land they are depicted 
with beards, and therefore are intended to represent Persians. The 
bas-reliefs in the peristyle represent the triumphal expedition of Sesos- 
tris to Arabia, after his numerous victories, as related by Diodorus Siculus. 
_ The world-famed palace of Memnon at Thebes, called the Memnonium, 
or, by the Romans, Temple of Serapis, one of the most wonderful monuments 
of the ancient world, has been so effectually destroyed by time, that, not- 
withstanding repeated investigations, not a‘single portion of the building 
itself has been discovered. Still, the colossal statues between the palace of 
Sesostris and the mausoleum of Osymandias corroborate so far Strabo’s 
description of it, as to remove any doubt that the acacia wood near Medinet 
Abou occupies the site of the ancient Memnonium. 
The colossi of Tamy and Shamy are the most attractive of a large number 
of fragments of colossi in the acacia wood, numerous enough to decorate all 
the squares of alarge city. Twoof them, the northern and the southern, are 
represented on pl. 6, fig. 5. Almostall these colossi are formed of limestone 
or sandstone, granite, or breccia, a material which the Egyptians alone 
have ever been able to work into statues. The northern of these two 
colossi, which were probably the largest statues in the Memnoniun, is 
covered with hieroglyphics and with inscriptions in Latin and Greek, pro- 
claiming that the colossus at sunrise emitted asound somewhat like the 
breaking string of a harp or a guitar. Cambyses caused this statue to be 
overthrown and destroyed, for the purpose of examining its internal 
construction, and of finding out whether the reputed sounds were not a 
deception practised upon the people by the priests. It is not improbable 
that the effect of the sun upon the stone was so powerful as to cause a vibra- 
tion of its surface. Similar sounds are said to have been noticed by the 
French engineers in the granite apartments of the palace at Carnak. The 
mutilated portion of the colossus was rebuilt by five courses of sandstone, 
and the ancient head replaced upon it by the Romans. The statue and 
base were 48+13—61 feet high, and weighed about 750 tons. The 
southern colossus, also somewhat defaced, is formed of a single block of 
breccia, and between its legs are placed three smaller statues. 
The mausoleum of Osymandias is another monument worthy of mention, 
as it contained 16 colossal statues of Osiris, 29 feet 24 inches high, and the 
statue of Osymandias represented in a sitting position, 53 feet 10 inches 
high, several feet higher than the largest of the Memnon statues. It was 
‘ut out of rose-colored granite, contained about 11,965 cubic feet, and 
‘weighed about 1,000 tons. After standing for 2000 years, in the 
year 523 3. c. this statue was thrown down by Cambyses. Opposite to 
9 
